Warning: Experimental: Comskip 0.73 posted

[erik]

I have made version 0.73 of Comkip, it can be downloaded from here
or from http://mk.kaashoek.com/gbpvr where all my gbpvr stuff can be found.

This version adds the processing of sound. Blackframes are only detected when there is also silence.
As a result you will need much less tuning.
If you are not an expert I recomment to use verbose=5 as maximum.
A long outstanding bug that caused comskip to sometimes crash has been solved.
The blackframe detection performance has been restored to the quality of release 0.69. without the need to do much tuning.

Disclaimer 1:
Only use this upgrade when you have logo's on shows and a lot of errors with the previous version.

Disclaimer 2:
Some mpeg editors mess up the PTS/DTS sequence, some digital broadcast streams create "strange" mpeg stream. The mpeg decoder used in comskip is not very robust and the picture/sound synchronisation is also not very robust
If no black frames are detected (look in the log) you may have picture/sound missynchronisation.

I wished this all was simpler, Jere must have a lot of time to make SA, or should I send my wife on a 2 month holiday? :o

[Jere_Jones]

I wished this all was simpler, Jere must have a lot of time to make SA, or should I send my wife on a 2 month holiday?

Yes... many many hours have gone into the simple idea of keeping the audio and video syncronized. Trust me when I say, "I feel your pain."

Jere

[kevin_c]

Quick question for you regarding Comskip. Is that just geared at US commercials? Or will it work elsewhere?

We don't tend ot have the fade to black thing in Ireland (same as the UK), but often it's left in there as transition between scenes in US shows, because we have less commercial breaks per hour.

[Dai]

Which version would you suggest is used if there are no logos on programs?

I'm in the UK where generally, there are no logos on the programs, I've tried a number of versions of comskip and played with the parameters and also tried SA and get about 90% correct identification of commercials at best. It seems that both SA and comskip are now being optimised around logos.

It seems that the idea of using the audio as well as black frames should help no end, (even witout using logo detection) is it still possible to turn off logo detection in this new version?

I'm gonna give this new one a try regardless, but would like you opinion on what is likely to work best over here.

Thanks

Dai

[reboot]

It's not a matter of what works in what country, but what works on each station.
I've found you can tune comskip or SA to work 100% on one station, and it will fail miserably on another.
SA works better (or it will in a couple of days when sub and jere get together on the next release) because it uses profiles, which you can set up for each station (or block of stations), or each recording even, based on a few different parameters.

I currently have 4 profiles, which detect 100% on their corresponding channels.
I then apply the profile needed to other channels, based on how the commercials are run, black frames, length of commercial block, etc.

Your best bet, is to run schoolhouse, and use it to set up a profile.

[erik]

I am optimizing comskip for use with dutch and belgian broadcasters. Both do have logo's during shows
Also BBC2 is used for testing but that has no logo's and no commercials during films which is a much more difficult situations.
For many films comskip will work fine but there are films with many very (or entirely) dark scenes and than it becomes difficult.
Results do vary
Next to these channels Discovery always has a logo. Which is effectively the same as no logo. This situation is automatically recognized and taken care of.
Again results vary.

When there are no black frames between at least some commercials (you can not see one black frame while watching, only with an MPEG editor you will be able to judge) comskip will not work. I would be interested to receive such a file with at least 1 minute film, then the commercials and again at least 1 minute film. Can someone upload to my ftp server?

Black frames could also be any color or even white.

Aspect ratio is used to differentiate between show and commercial. Comskip can determine the dominant aspect ratio and score all others towards commercial. Cutting on aspect ratio borders is only done when logo's on shows are available to prevent too many false positives. This is also automatic.

I would be very much interested in receiving your log file recorded with verbose=10.
Please mail them. My profile has my mail address.

Comskip can be used with multiple ini files

comskip --ini=filenameof.ini filetoprocess.mpg

If sub adds a %2 argument containg the channel number to postprocessing.bat we could use

comskip --ini=comskip%2.ini %1

[kevin_c]

I wonder, are profiles shared anywhere online. No point everyone reinventing the wheel.

[erik]

Some have been shared but no central repository

You can share your working profiles in this forum

The profile I included should work for 80% of the situations and is a good starting point

[Dai]

Thanks for your responses guys,

I'm going to have a try with the latest version, Erik, I'll send you some log files when it's recorded a couple of things and thanks for all your hard work on comskip.

Reboot, what is 'schoolhouse' am I missing something useful?

[erik]

Jere has made Showanalyzer (SA). It is a next generation comskip.
It includes a tool called schoolhouse to support the tuning of parameters.

SA seems to work nearly perfect for USA/Canadian conditions.
My personal experience with SA suggest less then perfect (but still good!) performance under European conditions.

Why do I work on comskip? Because my family demands perfect fully automatic commercial deletion. And because its fun